When There's No One Else
by HoodedSpellcaster
Summary: Sometimes Lily Luna Potter is left alone when she wants someone to listen to her. And when she is, she likes to open the curtains.


This is my second entry for _Savita's __Parental Figure Challenge _on Harry Potter Challenges forum.

A/N: This is an one-shot about Lily Luna Potter and Walburga Black. The list of prompts is in the end of the chapter.

Reviews are always appreciated.

* * *

Sometimes, at 12 Grimmauld Place, time is running low.

Sometimes duty calls and her father, Head Auror Harry Potter, hasn't time. Harry must hurry and leave his coffee on the table, his morning paper unfinished, and his wife and children without goodbye-kisses. Harry must defeat the Dark Arts one time after another.

But _she_ is not angry; his father's job is important so she swallows her displeasure. Naturally Harry would have time for her later.

Sometimes her mother, Ginevra Potter, hasn't time. Ginny must take care of their home; there isn't any letup. Night and day she's working, making breakfast, making dinner; spells come handy doing the dishes, doing the mopping, and the sweeping and the dusting. But more than occasionally Ginny is not at home at all.

But _she_ is not angry; her mother needs the time of her own, too, and so she doesn't want to bother her. Certainly Ginny would listen to her when she has time.

Sometimes her brothers, James and Albus Potter, haven't time. They come and go without taking her with them; who would want a little sister to slow them down? They have their own businesses and they don't want a girl to mess up their plans.

But _she_ is not angry; her brothers just are like that. Surely they would spend time with her when it's okay to them.

Lily Potter is sixteen, a big girl already.

Sometimes she is left alone when she wants, _needs_, someone to be with, someone to talk to.

And when she is, she opens _the curtains_.

The screaming starts immediately.

"STAINS OF DISHONOUR, FILTHY MUD-BLOODS AND BLOOD TRAITORS AND THEIR FILTHY CHILDREN!"

In the hallway is a painting her parents and brothers hate dearly. It's affixed permanently to the wall, and no matter how many times she had heard her father trying to remove it, the painting won't budge from its spot. And so it's kept hidden behind the velvet curtains.

But Lily likes the painting. It portrays a woman, a woman like no other.

_Walburga Black._

"FILTH! SCUM! BRINGING DISGRACE TO THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS–!"

Lily smiles a little at the painting and sits down in front of it. She is not bothered by Walburga's screaming which echoes around the house.

"It's just me", Lily says quietly. She has cried again; it's in her tone and red-trimmed eyes.

The screams end as quickly as they have started and Walburga Black silences. She glares down at the girl with sour disdain but doesn't start screaming again. She never starts screaming again when she notices Lily, and the state she's in.

Lily knows Walburga shouldn't really like her. After all, Lily is a daughter of a half-blood and a blood traitor. She is what Walburga would call filth.

But Walburga doesn't _hate_ Lily Potter. She doesn't call her filth.

Walburga hasn't changed over the years but _the circumstances_ have.

"Don't you ever get tired on screaming?" Lily asks the portrait. "Because I do. Screaming doesn't help; it doesn't make things better." She picks up a quill and opens her diary. "It doesn't help…" Lily wants to write the pages full of curses but she can't. The pages hold too many happy memories so she drops the quill and just cries.

Walburga watches Lily crying. She doesn't say a word; she doesn't console the heartbroken girl. She lets her cry and scream all she wants because Walburga knows that screaming helps, no matter what Lily says. Walburga has screamed for her whole life; it had kept her alive for so long. But Lily is not her.

"Why does he have to get married? Why doesn't he…?" Lily sobs and raises her eyes from the tear-stained book full of small poems and red hearts on her lap and looks at the woman. "It's not fair…!"

Walburga doesn't break the eye contact between them but neither does she ask anything. She already knows. She has listened to the Potter girl's foolish dreaming for years, always Lily has talked about this same boy and when she had finally got him...

Lily lets her gaze drop and she holds her stomach tightly, protectively. No one had yet noticed how it has grown in past months.

No one except Walburga Black.

Lily hasn't told anyone else. No one ever has time to listen to her. For one night she had spent with her prince she had thought all her dreams had come true. She had dreamed about a happy future but everything had crumbled down when she had received the invitation to the wedding.

Edward Lupin – her Teddy – and Victoire Weasley. Lily had thought, she had _hoped_ from the bottom of her heart, that someday Teddy would have seen her as something more than just a sister. It just never truly happened. She remembered how Teddy had looked at her after the night.

One word was enough to tear Lily apart.

_Mistake_.

"Have you ever this way?" Lily asks the older witch and sniffs. Walburga grunts and Lily takes it as a yes. "It hurts so much–" She raises her hand to her chest. "–in here."

Walburga nods. Of course she knows what betrayal feels like. How it hurts to lost someone dear. She had gone through that. Too often, she might have added.

"Life is like playing Monopoly", Walburga says finally, gaining the attention of the red-haired witch. Her voice calm and collected; it's nothing like when she sounds when she screams horridly. "You have to pay for it."

Lily stops sobbing. She knows the older witch is right.

"But what should I…?"

Walburga shakes her head with a scoff. She's always talking with the years of burdening experience. Her message is simple:

"Don't look at me for the ready answers. The only one who can control your life is _you_."

Lily's eyes fill up with tears but she laughs them away. She's the only one who can control her life, that's right. She stands up; the loose shirt hides every sign of her pregnancy.

"You must have been a good mother", she says warmly and leans to the frame of the painting. Walburga, for a moment, looks a little taken aback but she regains her composure before Lily can notice the change.

Walburga doesn't like thinking about her sons or talking about them. Both of them are dead so why should she look back? For the most of the time she doesn't want to remember she, too, has been a mother. She doesn't want to think what his sons had thought about her. She doesn't think they had considered her as a good mother – at least Sirius didn't.

And it hurts.

Walburga looks at the girl with a sullen tight-lipped smile. "I wish someone would have said those things to me when I was alive."

Lily smiles back at her. "I said it now, does it count?"

Walburga Black is there for Lily when she needs someone. She has time for Lily, and at the same time, Lily has time for her.

They are not a mother and a daughter.

Lily shifts before Walburga answers and quickly dries her cheeks of the remains of the tears. She felt the wards moving around the house; her father has apparated to the yard. Lily moves to the curtains, an apologetic look shining in her eyes. Walburga knows that look all too well.

"I'll give you my answer some other day, maybe", Walburga says.

She doesn't admit it to Lily – she doesn't truly admit it to even herself – that she's grown attached to the red-haired girl. Lily reminds Walburga of herself when she was young. She reminds her of the time when she had lived with her two brothers and her parents in the very same house. She wasn't allowed to make her decisions. If she had, she would have never married nor have children. But she had to. Lily doesn't have to make same mistakes.

Lily nods at her and Walburga gives a smile. It's not uncommon, the smiling, not when Lily is around. Lily makes her smile.

"I have time", Walburga adds.

The curtains close in front of the painting and the bright smile of Lily Potter is gone. The darkness embraces Walburga Black. She can hear Harry Potter and his loud, obnoxious blood-traitor friend entering the house but suddenly she doesn't feel like screaming.

Would it be bad if she for once was silent and… just listened?

She would, after all, have time to scream later.

* * *

A/N: I wound it difficult to choose an event for this but I settled down choosing "marriage" as the main theme.

The prompts I was given: Disgrace, monopoly, diary, poem, and "Some other day, maybe."


End file.
